Apple

There are two brands in the mobile phone business iPhones and smartphones. In the U.S. and U.K. the “i” is winning. In the ROW (rest of world) the smarts have it. Smartphone is a generic term and more often than not includes phones with Google’s Android operating system. That said, most people just call them smartphones not Android phones.

As Microsoft starts to improve its standing in the U.S. with its own Windows phone operating system (7 or 8?) it, too, will probably be referred to as a smartphone. Remind you of Mac vs. PC?

What I enjoy about branding – way more than using paid media to display my ideas in market – is to listen to the market, hear how it speaks and thinks, and use the market’s own language to gain conversation. iPhone is paid, smartphone is organic. Mac is paid. PC is organic.

Xerox is paid and organic.

Apple is a lovely brand. It has taught the world how to design and market. The world is catching up. It needs a new I, me thinks. Peace!

Over the last two weeks I’ve read some great stories on Apple and its production situation in China. The writers of the stories, both appearing in the New York Times, are certainly not Apple haters, but their point of view appears set. The loss of American jobs is not a good thing but is justified by the low cost of production in China. Factory workers there make about $17 a day.

Anyone who reads the story, including references to 4 deaths and 77 injuries, might come away pondering avarice, patriotism, the quality of the American education system, population growth. This is wonderful reporting and might, were Charles Dickens alive, make for a fascinating novel. Do I smell a Pulitzer? Mabes.

But here’s the real deal. People want iPhones and iPazzles. The way to make them available is to offer them at a low price. Apple wouldn’t have sold 200 million iPhones if they had cost $1,000 a piece. So this was just good business. It is a flat world. Chinese production is our new reality. African production will be our next reality. Then Antarctica.

We have pocketbooks and brains. We can boycott Apple or buy Apple. Americans love an underdog and we tire easily of the Overdog. Apple, for decades, was the underdog – not anymore. Tom Cook’s job is going to be a hell of a lot harder than Steve Jobs. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t what? Peace!

Recent Articles

I love Christopher Walken. I’m beginning to appreciate Justin Timberlake. And I’m a huge fan of healthier-for-you foods. Brands are my thing and as an ad rat, my senses are heightened during the Super Bowl. All of these things converged during the Super Bowl of 2017 with the fruit drink spot featuring Messrs. Walken and […]

It has been a while since I watched my technology hero Robert Scoble on a video. He disappeared for a while, doing some Augmented Reality work, writing a book and living his “real world” life. Also he somewhat replaced Scobleizer.com with posts to Facebook. Anyway, I received an email from him today promoting a newsletter […]

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some time during brand planning career I began looking at assignments with the glass half full. Prior, there were a number of categories I walked into and start to twitch. “How am I going to learn this stuff? It’s too complicated. It’s dense and unappealing. Healthcare was […]

My friend, Roy Elvove is EVP Worldwide Communications at arguably the best ad agency in the world, BBDO. But to meet “Doc,” as his wife and friends call him, you’d never know he holds such a lofty job. He has worked at BBDO since 1999 and never, ever taken the spotlight off of BBDO, it’s executives, […]

I was a judge yesterday in the Griffin Farley Beautiful Minds completion. Mr. Farley was a BBH strategist who succumbed to cancer at way-too-early an age. The competition, and he would, likely, never have used the word competition, is a legacy built upon his nurturing of young planners. Clearly a beloved man. The showcase reminded […]

In 1974 JWT London’s Stephen King wrote a Planning Guide. Thanks to Julian Cole of Bee Bee Do (BBDO) for sharing it today. The JPEG below summarizes nicely how a brand works, based upon Mr. King’s constellation of “appeals.” This is a smart boil-down of what a brand is, why it works, and what it needs […]

If you read the previous What’s The Idea? post you’ll know I’m thinking about building an implementation phase into my brand planning engagement process. The idea is to become a brand supervisor at the client company for a couple of months to manage adherence. This, I know, is likely to go poorly unless handled with […]